PATENTS

Disclaimer: The views expressed are not professional views, but views from a layman. Any corrections from experts are more than welcome.

Shark Tank - One of the few series, which I have come to enjoy. The basis: Pitch your great-idea to the team of multi-billion Venture Capitalists, who in turn put in money towards the business, depending on your idea, pitching skills and the vision that the VC and the "pitcher" have. One of the key things that kept on coming on the episodes is patents. And the great ideas pitched most, if not all, had patents.

Am pretty sure this has to be the thorniest of issues that we as Kenyan innovators suffer from. Why do I say so? A couple of reasons:

a) People have so many good ideas, but then we can't share with the "big boys" in the market, as they will both be snatched and implemented before you even blink your eyes. Why? Financial muscle and proper management structures, which many up-coming entrepreneurs lack.

b) We lack knowledge on how to deal with patents. We are a developing country with a blue-print to vision 2030, which is being implemented in bits and pieces. Doing a quick search on Google, I realize there is a government entity under the ministry of Industrialization, called KIPI (Kenya Industrial Property Institute) .

Its good we have an arm of the government, that deals with patents. A quick flip into their site, which is well done, I go through the patents section. This is where all the jargon begins. They have some basic guidelines ET all of how to get a patent. Problem being when I download the document that shows the patent fees, first, I looked through the figures and understood nothing. Now that doesn't mean that I don't understand how to read numbers or anything, but the way they were presented and structured, it would be hard to for a kawaida mwananchi to understand them. So I quickly went to Hahn and Hahn Inc, Intellectual Property(IP) Practitioners, based in SA, they outline the costs to be around $2100 - $2300. Now that’s one hell of a figure.

Picture this, based on a story the Standard, run on page three of the dailies on Saturday (May,14^th 2011),A young guy with a great invention of a gadget that can cook after getting instructions from a mobile phone (The story run under the title - Student Whose Meal is but a Phone Call away).This is a great thing and good invention to some of us who are busy in the hustle of paper-chasing or what they call the rat race. I doubt this guy knows there is something called patenting of such a great invention, which if produced well under a good watch of Fab Labs at the University of Nairobi, the guy could sell millions of shillings or probably sell the invention to a manufacturer, where in return he could get royalties which could be a good revenue stream for the inventor.

That’s but one of the many inventions that just goes under the bus and after we read it, we enjoy and then life moves on. We have lost Kiondo and Kikoy to other people who are not Kenyans (Am not saying this in prejudice) but it’s because we have been busy sleeping on the job or too ignorant or simple we have procedures that need to be streamlined at the government body, KIPI. Kenya should have registered an industrial design to the kiondo and kikoy and also trademarked the name "kiondo" and “Kikoy” that way we would still be having them around.

Ideally after a rant you could provide possible solutions:

a) Streamlining the process. It takes up-to 60 days to a patent search and filing. How can we reduce this time period? Use of Technology to reduce inefficiencies and hence reduce the turn-around time

b) The Costs - At a tentative cost of $2100 - $2300(Hopefully not inflated), we need to get this to a lower cost. This will encourage more inventions and more patents. Think of it as sales by volume.

c) Collaborate with other government arms. If we could have the vision 2030 team come up with a small office, where we are able to help to encourage the young investors to patent their inventions, then that could be the way to go forward. And this will be to understand all inventions across the board and in all sectors.

d) KIPI - they need to do civil education on IP. This in-turn opens up eyes of inventors to patent their products. Think of it as spreading of word out there and hence revenue streams are high. I think why we lost Kiondo and Kikoy was lack of information.

That’s my 2 cents